The German government has approved Poland’s request to export five Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine that originally came from Berlin’s stockpile.
Poland and Slovakia have already delivered some MiG-29s to Ukraine, making them the first NATO countries to provide Kyiv with fighter jets, an escalation of military support that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz previously warned against.
“There will be no fighter jet deliveries to Ukraine,” Scholz said in January. He also warned against “entering into a constant competition to outbid each other when it comes to weapons systems” that are being sent to Ukraine.
While the MiG-29s are not the Western-made aircraft Kyiv has been demanding, the provision still marks a significant escalation of NATO military support.
In March 2022, when Poland first offered its MiG-29s to Ukraine, the Pentagon ruled it out over escalation concerns. NATO diplomats said at the time that Moscow could perceive the move as the alliance directly entering the war.
Polish pressure also led to Scholz approving the export of German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine and Berlin sending its own. In September 2022, when expressing his opposition to sending tanks and planes to Kyiv, Scholz said he was supporting Ukraine “in a way that is not escalating to where it is becoming a war between Russia and NATO because this would be a catastrophe.”
Kiev regime needed some extra encouragement for starting Great Spring Offensive. Here it comes.
Ukraine: The Ultimate Salvage Yard
I’m not sure how a MIG-29 would perform against an SU-27. But I have a good idea about how well it would fare against Russia’s anti-aircraft systems.
I hear US still has few Ford Model T cars in Smithsonian. Perhaps Ukraine can use that in their war efforts.
Stanley Steamer Fighting Vehicles inc
Scholz has been a disaster for Germany.
Does anyone in US/NATO command have a plan for losing this war without global destruction?
Just asking for a friend.
They worked so long and so hard to initiate it, so, it looks, they have no idea what to do if Russia prevails.
If we get into a nuclear exchange, that’s the moment evangelical white Jesus will come to earth and rapture everyone. Except Putin and the orcs.
I don’t know about that but several that won’t be flying high in the sky are Biden, Pelosi, Killary Clinton and the whole slew of war hustlers. Their master hangs out in somewhat darker and seedier places.
I would hope not. I’m not up on things like the “rapture” but don’t you go up buck naked? Now think of Biden, the witch and the other witch floating up for all to see. Did I make you upchuck?
I just choked on my coffee wars, Thank you. 😉
Think liver spots and lots of sag. Does that help. 🙂
I wouldn’t think you have to worry about those mentioned flying up naked for the rapture. They most likely will taking the escalator down several levels.
Hopefully they’ll be clothed since, according to my Jesus freak sister, I’ll be with them.
Out of curiosity wars, is she older or younger than you?
Older by 19 months. She told me I’m a good person but if I don’t accept JC as my savior, I can’t get into heaven. I think it was a kinder way of saying hell, but she did believe in purgatory not too long ago. So maybe she thinks a little detention will set me straight and she meant purgatory.
😉
Depending on what you read and how one interprets, scripture, for example… JC was fairly radical during his time… Very audacious.
Having said that, people do not have the right to impose their viewpoint on to others.
Everyone has their own path to follow….
I should add, it does sound like she loves and cares about you, very much and that is very sweet.
The problem isn’t JC. The problem with her is that I don’t believe in JC’s dad. And I don’t mean Joeseph.
H.W. Bush, George W., Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Joe Biden. All contributed to these glorious days.
Don’t forget Nuland, Sullivan, and Blinken.
That is the hottest place in the universe, and their master reserved the best seats for them.
You rock Renate!
This seems like it is getting a bit dicey….Very glad that Scholz can see some handwriting on the wall…
If I were a Russian that would really inflame me to go for the jugular against UKR.!
I do not see how this will end without all out ww-3! Thanks JoBye and your comrades. 🙁
Germany helping arm Nazis … The more things change, the more they stay the same …
well they were built by the soviets who gave up 32 years ago so these MIG-29s must be at least that old. i wonder if a cloud of exhaust coughs up out them when they are fired up every now and then. probably every one of them has a flat tire.
Someone shared to me these MIGs have been updated to about 70% of where Russia’s MIG-29s are.
It’s just like how were do with our planes.
Just like we can take out pretty easily anything we sell to our friends, the Russians have made sure they can do the same with their surplus sales.
Given the leak has shared these deliveries are not thought to help them to win the upcoming Spring offensive of their’s (and they are getting killed in greater numbers than the Russians are) I’m sure the Russians are already making salvage plans to recover the MIGS as they get shot down (if they don’t just bribe someone to sugar their gas tanks).
it is actually hilarious that an entire empire could be brought to it’s knees by C&H pure cane sugar
What’s even more hilarious is that Ukraine is using our money to by their diesel fuel from Russia (Seymore Hersh’s newest column) and likely Russian jet fuel is also making its way into Ukraine.
It sounds like Victoria Nuland’s man has plans in regards to Ukraine and Poland:
“Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky met his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda in Warsaw on Wednesday, during his first official visit to Poland since the beginning of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022.
“You have stood shoulder to shoulder with us, and we are grateful for it,” Zelensky stated during the meeting, pledging “no borders in political, economic and – especially important – in historical terms” between the two countries.”https://www.azerbaycan24.com/en/zelensky-vows-no-borders-between-ukraine-and-poland/
No borders?
Is Victoria planning something? Is she planning on giving … “Poland territories that historically belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which today are part of Ukraine”?
Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Khrushchev, all of them were very generous to Ukrainians. They added to Ukrainian republics a lot of lands which had nothing to do with historical Ukraine? Donbass, Crimea and much of Novorossia from Russia, Northern Bukovina from Rumania, Transcarpathia from Hungary and Galicia from Poland. Before the collapse of USSR, Ukraine had modern and well developed industry, science, very good agricultural land, coal, iron and a lot of other nice things. Ukrainian future looked very bright. Some people predicted, in five years Ukraine will be more prosperous than France. But something went wrong and all the wealth was divided among few oligarchs (the same as in Russia and Belarus). Belarus first got rid of the oligarchy system. Lukashenko stopped the criminal privatization in 1994. Russia managed to get rid of her oligarchs by 2004. Ukraine, unfortunately, never could get free of her oligarchy. In the end they made it a colony of USA and now everything go to pieces. Sad story.
Russia still has her oligarchs, and is run by them.
Isn’t Russia “autocratic”, in that the government can overrule oligarchs? Like China? And unlike in the “democratic” West?
If so, then “has” is accurate, and “run by” less so.
No country can have oligarchs unless it is run by the oligarchy. Big money don’t convert automatically a billionaire into an oligarch.
We, the U.S. of A. is the mother of all nests of oligarchs.
The US still has its oligarchs (disguised as corporations) and is still being run by them.
The US legalized it’s Mafia and incorporated it, almost tax free. Russians could learn a thing or two from the good old US of A.
The Russian establishment picked Putin for president because he was known not to be for sale. You may not want to know it, but he reduced corruption substantially, and some of the convicted oligarchs came to the US after serving some time and Putin let them go.
I really think that was a smart move by Putin.
The Russian leadership that picked Putin to replace Yeltsin were smart and acted in the interests of the nation and the Russian people. The kind of leadership we need and don’t have.
Just to see a photo of Biden and Zelensky hugging or Zelensky with his right hand under his left armpit not knowing where his heart is, tells it all. Putin and Lavrov always appear dignified and respectful to others.
When they added those republics to Ukraine they helped set this war into motion.
just as Western powers screwed up the Middle East by creating boundaries and countries; those old time Commies did not do anyone any favors by adding territories to Ukraine (in their own neocolonialism ways) that the world is fighting over today.
Yes, their logic was “divide and rule”. Bolsheviks were just a criminal gang and the borders between the republics were created against the will of people. Between 1917 and 1991 there were no referendums of free elections. It would be simple and logical, after the collapse of USSR, to create new fair borders considering the ethnic composition of the territories and the wish of majority of the local people. Unfortunately, no one was interested in this. Some people thought, those borders will be always transparent and the human right respected. Maybe it could be possible if neocons wouldn’t so actively support the radical nationalism in all those new countries bordering Russia.
The only way we could of had “fair(ness)” after the collapse of the USSR is not to have humans involved. I know it’s fashionable here to bash all things US and ignore all things bad that our competitors do but humans covet other’s stuff world-wide and have fought over each other’s stuff for eons.
20% of deaths in the first gatherings of humans, who figured out how to farm, were violent caused by the humans in the forest who rather raid instead of farm.
Nothing really has not changed.
I don’t blame everything on US, still it is obvious that their goal in the last 32 years in what does concern Russia, was to create as many problems for Russia as possible. Russia in those years until February 2022 did nothing to harm US. On the contrary. Putin helped them in Afghanistan although a couple of years earlier US bombed Serbia. Putin always tried to have good relations with The West. Only when it became absolutely obvious that US and NATO are determined to destroy Russia, he abandoned his pro-western orientation.
People are not perfect, that is clear. That’s why we need the state with reasonable laws and a constitution which must be respected. Also we need Church which promotes reasonable and good ideas.
Every side does what they perceive is in their interests but never perfectly.
Perfection was achieved over 2000 years ago and the world fights wars over if it even happened then or not.
It is good enough if we have adequate responsible people in the governments which act in interests of the people and not in interests of the financial elite. Even if they are very much imperfect, still it is much better than the oligarchy.
I am inclined to think that Jesus Christ was executed in 1185 and that the history of Christianity was very much different than what most people believe.
1185?
I told you the guy just makes people argue and there you go….lol.
There was a time when I also believed in Scaliger’s chronology and “traditional history”.
NATO was created to fight Russia, after the fall of the wall Putin had to find out the hard way that nothing has changed, US/NATO are Russia’s enemy since day one, the man who said to keep Russia out, USA in, and Germany down knew what he said to be true.
Putin believed in pragmatism of the western elites. It was obvious that economic cooperation between EU and Russia could be beneficial for everyone. Unfortunately, European elites betrayed their own nations and chosen the confrontation.
One of the oligarchs vested Z with a mansion in Florida, perhaps the money in the banks in Peru or Costa Rica, and a nice little place in Italy. Pretty good for a poor piano player, eh?
Poland is itching for a war with Russia. The pols know how well it plays with the yokels (in the US as well) and are trading on it. But Russian forbearance has its limit …. And NATO is exhausted with only nukes left on offer!
“Poland is itching for a war” always, but only with one condition – the soldiers from other countries should fight, while poles will parade together with the victors when the war is over. In 1939 they discussed in Warsaw how Polish solders should be dressed while parading in Berlin. When the war happened, polish government ran away from Warsaw full speed in the first days of the war abandoning their army and their country.
You know that there are no ‘borders’ inside the EU Schengen area, as in you can drive between the different countries without even noticing where you passed the formal border lines. So perhaps it is less Nuland and more an expression of their desire to be part of the larger EU Schengen area.
Sometimes the price for the membership in EU is too high. That is the problem.
A large majority of MEPs has approved plans to trigger Article 7 against Hungary, which is accused of seriously breaching EU values. At the moment, the most important EU “value” is unconditional support of Kiev neo-Nazi regime which among other crimes is also repressing Hungarian minority in Ukraine.
The main argument of Ukrainian coupists in February 2014 was that Yanukovich refused to sign the agreement with EU. First law adopted by Ukrainian parliament after the coup, was the official prohibition to use Russian language. That’s about EU values.
And, of course, in the package with the EU membership, goes the membership in anti-Russian military organization NATO. Can anyone be surprised that Russians in Ukraine couldn’t share such “values”?
To put it shortly, EU is a mechanism for ganging up European countries against Russia.
The price of membership is too high as defined how? You could argue in sovereignty perhaps, but in monetary terms plainly speaking no – Hungary facing Article 7 is not going to pay more as a member than it receives, it is only going to make a smaller surplus from its membership, that is its membership fee will not exceed even the direct transfer of funds back to Hungary it will make these closer to zero but not below.
Other members have been net contributors for years and years, they are so because the economic gain from membership far exceeds the cost of membership – in the shape of access to larger markets and bigger pools of talent, was this not the case more countries would have left EU.
Proceedings against Hungary preceded the SMO by several years, Hungary is not facing these procedures over its lack of support for Ukraine – no actions that I know of have been taken against Hungary over its non standard view of the situation – if you know of any such actions please do tell.
There was no law against using Russian language in Ukraine the law that there is fails to protect Russian as a minority language but does not forbid its use:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/19/new-language-requirement-raises-concerns-ukraine
So you are misinformed – and notice that EU would have problems with this law as it favors EU languages so discriminates Russian:
No there are several EU countries not in NATO – Ireland, Austria and still for a while Sweden – EU is not a package deal including NATO membership.
It certainly was not until the SMO, the US was repeatedly complaining that the EU partners were getting too deeply involved with Russia. That said I’m sure that fairly many Russians in Ukraine may have been against joining EU.
“The price of membership is too high as defined how?” – it is not about small money, it is about the regime change in those countries which refuse to subordinate. Congress group drafts legislation targeting officials and government supporters, mainly affiliated to Fidesz party. They would replace Orban by their own man if they could but at the moment they can’t organize regime change even in Saudi Arabia.
Don’t compare Ireland, Austria and Sweden with the countries of former Warsaw Pact. There is a difference between the situation in 1945 and the situation in 1990.
“It was certainly not until SMO” – did you ever heard about Antimissile Shield in Poland and Rumania? They started to build it no less than 15 years ago.
There is no regime change forced upon any members, if the government in any country feels that they are in that kind of danger then they can submit an article 50 notification (Leave notification) and that ends any power EU has over them as a member.
EU parliament groups? They have no power to target officials and or government supporters – all they can do is to curb voting rights in EU and cut EU money flowing back into the Hungarian economy – these are AFAIK not transfers to individuals. But given that you mention Saudi Arabia, you are either not talking about EU or not about EU internal policy instruments.
You were implying that EU membership was a package deal with NATO membership, Ireland Joined in 1973, Sweden joined in 1995 and Austria the same year – there is nothing to suggest that NATO is part of joining EU.
Yes – this was not part of an EU program but of a NATO one – you again seem to conflate the two organizations with each other.
EU bureaucracy is subordinated to Washington the same as NATO bureaucracy. Why do you think EU bureaucracy is not interested to investigate the terrorist act against Nord Stream? Because they know that it was organized by their master and they don’t dare to do anything which could irritate Washington.
Because nothing will come from such an investigation – if we found a dead Russian diver there we would think the US had placed him there and if we fund a dear US diver it would be the same in reverse – short of a sub witch had got caught up in the explosion nothing conclusive would come of it. Even if we would like to please the US EU rules does not provide for the kind of action you thought EU was taking – EU rules does allow such targeted actions against non members as could be seen when EU was in trade conflict with the US during the Trump years.
No we know no such thing – and seeing as we have been in trade conflicts with the US several times the notion that we are subordinate to Washington is plainly absurd – not to mention Macron’s words on Taiwan.
“nothing will come from such an investigation” – of course nothing will come from “such” investigation. That’s why they blocked in UNSC the proper independent investigation.
Nothing would come from any investigation – UNSC or otherwise – that is the point.
You are actually making one more argument why the Russians had incentives to blow up a pipeline, that was no longer in use – i.e. splitting the coalition of countries opposing their agenda. This is very likely why the NATO countries are steadfastly declining to debate or investigate this event.
To the EU countries and the US there were far more and far worse risks to blowing up the pipeline than there were benefits, to Russia the reverse was the case. Notice I’m not saying that they did it only analyzing the pro’s and con’s of either side to do it.
Even NATO propaganda stopped to blame Russia because those accusations are too absurd, and started to blame Ukraine. Only you are carrying on with this nonsense.
No less absurd is your statement that nothing would come from any investigation. Don’t you know that Denmark’s foreign minister has confirmed that the Russian gas company Gazprom has found an object near Nord Stream 2 pipeline which is suspected to be part of a remote detonation system? So it is still not worth of the investigation?
And what about Seymour Hersh? What is wrong with his investigation? Is he Putin’s agent? The same as Trump who also confirmed that it couldn’t be Russia who organized this terror act?
I did not blame Russia I only pointed out that they had more benefits and no serious risks of doing blowing up the pipeline – and for the record NATO has not stated that Russia has been ruled out, the only thing that has come out is that there is no proof that it is Russia plus a theory that the Ukrainians or a pro Ukrainian group may have done it.
I am aware I also know that Denmark invited the Russians to take part in the investigation and that they at first declined, but have now AFAIK accepted the invitation – But as I point out if we find a US made remote detonator do we know that it was the US, if we find a Russian made one do we know it was Russia – in both cases I’d argue we would be none the wiser – both parties could use a device from the other and likely would.
Hersh has one source that he keeps secret and using Trump as a source is beyond absurd.
Trump was President and, quite possible, he will be President again. Many people in CIA and among the militaries support him, trust him and inform him what is going on. The absurd is to believe that 100% of CIA and militaries are supporting Biden and his team which is dragging US into a catastrophe.
Of course Hersh is keeping in secret his sources. That’s the reason why he has sources among very well informed people.
Trump is a proven liar he has no specific insight into what went on with the pipeline – and with any luck he faces jailtime though I doubt he will get it – but it makes a lot of sense that you would back him.
If he knew that the US had done it he would not have been able to keep his mouth shut.
Who does? I do not believe that Biden is dragging us into a catastrophe as I believe that allowing Putin to get away with his landgrab would take us to a worse catastrophe hence I prefer the one where we at least know that we stood up against wars of territorial conquest – which is at least a stand that agrees with our values.
He may have good reasons but it does make it a much less credible story, essentially we have no way to assess the veracity of is story let alone what level of access to information his source had.
As I said there is no chance of getting at the true story behind who blew up the pipeline until many years have passed and official papers are released or if it was the Russians until they have had a regime change. Until that there is nothing to be gained from wasting time on this we’ll not get closer to the truth.
5 MiG-29’s? And not only are they the old, ‘A’ variants. But, I assume since they came from Germany via their earlier re-marriage to East Germany? They are downgraded, Warsaw Pact A’s at that.
It seems more and more clear to me that the West tossing all their old crap at Ukraine and saying ‘Here. Now tell us how wonderful we are.’?
Is little more than PR.
Of course, I am not talking about the huge numbers of good quality things like ATGM’s, artillery, AA systems and the like that NATO is sending Ukraine.
But, the big stuff like tanks and aircraft? Have, more or less, been NATO countries throwing at Ukraine anything they can find in their ‘past sell by date’ aisle.
Germany pulls its pants down and bends over again.
“Germany Approves Poland’s Request to Send MiG-29 Fighter Jets to Ukraine”.
Beat up old MiG-29s with 30% less thrust are no bargain. Even if flyable the maintenance man hours per flight hours will be prohibited.
Alexander Mercouris on YouTube was right, Olaf Scholtz always caves in the end. He predicted that Scholtz would complain but then acquiesce to Poland’s demands.